Air strike kills wife and child of Hamas Gaza military chief

An Israeli air strike Wednesday on a house in the Gaza Strip town of Deir el-Balah killed a pregnant woman, three young children and two male relatives, emergency services said.

They named the dead as Rafat Aloah, 32, three of his children, his brother Mohammed 21 and the woman, Nabilah Aloah, whose relationship to the others was not immediately clear.

Wife and child of Hamas Gaza military chief

Hamas said Wednesday that an Israeli air strike killed the wife and child of its Gaza military chief, as a temporary ceasefire went up in smoke and Cairo truce talks froze.

"The wife of the great leader was martyred with his daughter," in a strike Tuesday night, Hamas's exiled deputy leader Mussa Abu Marzuk wrote on Facebook while saying nothing about the fate of Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades commander Mohammed Deif himself.

The Israeli military said it hit "more than 25 targets" in Gaza Tuesday but would not elaborate.

Tuesday's deaths of the woman and a two-year-old girl were the first as a result of Israeli air raids in Gaza since August 10.

In a strike Wednesday morning on the southern Gaza town of Deir el-Balah two people were killed and eight injured, emergency services said.

More than a month of fighting between Israel and Hamas has killed at least 2,022 Palestinians and 67 on the Israeli side since July 8.

Hamas's armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said Israel had "opened the gates of hell on itself" by the killings and warned that the Jewish state would "pay the price for its crimes."

A 24-hour truce due to last until midnight (2100 GMT) collapsed late Tuesday afternoon, with each side blaming the other.

The al-Qassam Brigades said in a statement that it fired 34 rockets into Israel throughout Tuesday, hitting Tel Aviv and the southern city of Beersheva.

An Israeli military statement put the number fired at "about 50"  but reported no casualties.

"A rocket hit an open area in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area," it said and confirmed that  two rockets landed near Beersheva, which is home to around 200,000 Israelis.

Air raid sirens were also heard in Jerusalem, with Hamas claiming a rocket attack on the city.

Police said it appeared that a rocket fell on empty ground in the occupied West Bank, outside Jerusalem.

'Ceasefire has broken down'

Palestinian delegation head Azzam al-Ahmed said that his team would leave Cairo on Wednesday.

"We are leaving...but we have not pulled out of negotiations," he told AFP, adding the Palestinians were waiting for Israel to respond to their truce proposal.

"We will not come back (to Cairo) until Israel responds," he said.

The fighting shattered nine days of relative quiet in the skies over Gaza.

A senior Hamas official, Ezzat al-Rishq, warned Israel it would "not enjoy security so long as the Palestinian people do not".

But Israel's US ally put the blame squarely on the group itself.

"Hamas has security responsibility for Gaza... Rocket fire came from Gaza," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said.

"As of right now, with today's developments, we are very concerned and it is our understanding the ceasefire has broken down."

The renewal of Israeli air strikes spread panic among Gaza residents.

An AFP reporter saw hundreds of Palestinians streaming out of Shejaiya, an eastern area of Gaza City which has been devastated by more than a month of fighting between Israel and the militant Islamist Hamas movement.

More poured out of the Zeitun and Shaaf areas, alarmed by a series of explosions and heading to shelter in UN schools, local witnesses said. Agencies

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